Where In the Universe Challenge #31

It’s Wednesday, so that means its time for another “Where In The Universe” challenge to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. See if you can name where in the Universe this image is from, and give yourself extra points (or some extra Thanksgiving turkey if you live in the US) if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. Make your guess and post a comment if you’re brave enough. I’ll try to post the answer tomorrow, depending how busy I am with the holiday festivities, so check back sometime Thursday to find the answer and see how you did. Good luck and Happy Thanksgiving!

UPDATE (11/27): The answer has now been posted below. If you haven’t made your guess yet, no peeking before you do!!

Well, the guesses posted by readers in the comments ranged from various places around the solar system, but the most frequent answer is the correct one: the Cydonia region on Mars, taken by ESA’s Mars Express. Cydonia is located in the Arabia Terra region on Mars, between the southern highlands and the northern plains of Mars. The area has several mounds of various shapes and sizes. Some over-enthusiastic folks looking at the first image of this region from NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter (1976) could see “pyramids” and a face. The “Face on Mars” can be seen in the lower right hand corner of the image above.

And here is another view of the “Face” from Mars Express. Looks more like an interesting hill, and not at all like a face.

Take a look at some more images of the region from Mars Express here.

Thanks for participating in this week’s WITU Challenge, and be sure to play again next week!